The present invention relates to specifying, generating and evaluating messaging addresses in a messaging system
When an electronic mail (e-mail) message is sent, the intended recipients of the message are typically specified by listing their e-mail identifiers. For example, an e-mail address might be specified as xe2x80x9clogin-id@domain-namexe2x80x9d. Such an address uniquely identifies the recipient globally.
However, a need arises to specify the intended recipients of a message, not by their identities, but rather by properties associated with the recipients. For example, desired sets of recipients might be described by the properties: xe2x80x9ccompany employees interested in databasesxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ccompany employees who work in New Jerseyxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ccompany employees interested in databases and who work in New Jerseyxe2x80x9d, etc. Such property-based addressing is currently supported by two distinct mechanisms.
One prior art mechanism that supports property-based addressing is directory addressing. Use of a directory allows for the specification of a combination of attribute value pairs to select an intended set of recipients. The attribute names must be part of the directory schema. For example, a company e-mail directory of employees may have attributes indicating the state in which each employee works and the salary grade or title of each employee. Prior art systems allow the use of conjunctive specifications of the form xe2x80x9cstate=nj:tl=SGDxe2x80x9d, where xe2x80x9cstate=njxe2x80x9d specifies the state of New Jersey, xe2x80x9ctl=SGDxe2x80x9d specifies a title of xe2x80x9cSGDxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9c:xe2x80x9d is the conjunction operator. Thus, this specification would indicate all company employees who work in New Jersey and who have a title of xe2x80x9cSGDxe2x80x9d. Such a directory based addressing scheme is described in commonly-owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/581,654 by Mark Jones, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Another prior art mechanism that supports property-based addressing is mailing lists. Mailing lists are a mechanism for creating lists of identities of message recipients. Once a mailing list is defined, a message sender may select a set of intended recipients without actually knowing the identities of the recipients. For example, a mailing list designated xe2x80x9ccodbxe2x80x9d may contain the identities of company employees interested in databases, and a mailing list xe2x80x9ccomsgxe2x80x9d may contain the identities of company employees who are interested in messaging.
Current messaging systems are limited in that they do not support combinations of directory and mailing list addressing mechanisms, even though some current messaging systems support each mechanism separately. For example, it is not currently possible to specify that the intended recipients of a message are xe2x80x9ccompany employees whose salary grade is SGD and who are members of the xe2x80x98codbxe2x80x99 mailing listxe2x80x9d. A related limitation is that current messaging systems that support the use of mailing lists do not permit the specification of intended recipients using arbitrary combinations of individual mailing lists. For example, it is not currently possible to specify that the intended recipients of a message are xe2x80x9ccompany employees who are in the intersection of the mailing lists xe2x80x98codbxe2x80x99 and xe2x80x98comsgxe2x80x99xe2x80x9d.
Another limitation of current messaging systems is that membership in mailing lists must be explicitly enumerated, and cannot make use of directory information. For example, it is not currently possible to specify that members of the mailing list xe2x80x9cha6117xe2x80x9d are xe2x80x9ccompany employees whose organization code in the directory is HA6117000xe2x80x9d. This may lead to replication of information and potential inconsistencies in the information maintained.
A need arises for a technique which supports combinations of directory and mailing list addressing mechanisms, provides the capability to specify intended message recipients using combinations of mailing list and directory information and does not require mailing lists to be explicitly enumerated.
The present invention is a messaging system, and method of operation thereof, which supports combinations of directory and mailing list addressing mechanisms, provides the capability to specify intended message recipients using combinations of mailing list and directory information and does not require mailing lists to be explicitly enumerated. The present invention allows intended message recipients to be specified as declarative addresses, which may include combinations of directory and mailing list information.
A messaging system, according to the present invention, includes a messaging server and an address resolution module. The messaging server receives a message from a sender system and transmits the message to the recipient system. The address resolution module, which is coupled to the messaging server, receives a declarative address associated with the message, resolves the declarative address into at least one messaging address and transmits the at least one messaging address to the messaging server.
In one embodiment, a database system may be coupled to the address resolution module to allow address resolution based on information stored in a database. The address resolution module generates a database query based on the declarative address and transmits the generated query to a database system. The database system receives a database query, retrieves at least one messaging address specified by the query and transmits the retrieved at least one messaging address to the address resolution module.
The declarative address may specify directory information, mailing list information, or a combination of directory information and mailing list information.
The present invention is operable with electronic message of all kinds, including, for example, e-mail messages, voice-mail messages, fax messages, conference calls, and paging messages.